Party at McDonald’s

Tuesday December 11th, 2012

by Maria Luci

Munich-based photographer Christian Brecheis is lovin’ it. Or should I say Ich liebe es? Probably not, since my German is pretty weak… But it does seem somewhat appropriate since this post is all about Christian’s recent shoot for German McDonald’s and McCafes.

This particular job came to Christian through Heye, an advertising agency based in Munich. They asked Christian to shoot a variety of “party-type” shots in McDonald’s throughout Germany. Heye’s creatives fully understood what their client wanted out of the shoot, and had transformed McDonald’s vision into lively concepts that perfectly hit the mark. Christian’s job was to cement Heye’s ideas to, making the disco party scene come to life… And lucky for them, this wasn’t Christian’s first rodeo disco.

Christian felt the job was going to be one of his principal assignments for the year, and was happy to take on the challenge. He’s no stranger to the “party lifestyle” advertising scene, so he already had an idea of some of the shots he needed. He quickly got to work with the Heye team on pre-production, scouting tons of McDonald’s and McCafe’s in the Munich metro area for two days straight. Christian says, with a laugh, that he scouted so many McDonald’s that if he’d checked in with Foursquare at each one, he’d surely have earned the title of “Burger King.” After scouting, the team jumped right into a live casting with over 60 models—a process that Christian says made him feel like a judge on America’s Next Top Model. They ended up choosing four models per day for each of the four scheduled shoot days. Once everything was in order, the party began.

Having receiving mood boards from Heye, Christian knew they were looking for extremely upbeat, positive images of young folks having an awesome time. He made sure to shoot both positive and traditional McDonald’s customer shots along with over-the-top fun, party photos. The latter, of course, making the assignment a “fun shoot for sure!”

Christian earned a lot of very positive feedback from the final images. The photos will now be used in McDonald’s advertising across Europe.